How to make a pine cone bird feeder

Get the kids together and make a pine cone bird feeder for your backyard. A pine cone bird feeder is easy and fun to make.

I like to hang my clothes on the line outside as often as I can. I love the fresh air and the quietness of the activity. It is one of the few household chores that I enjoy.

With my family of five I do at least one load a day so, unless it is bucketing down with rain, I’m spending time outside every day and I always like to encourage my kids to join me. When they were younger it was for safety reasons so that I could keep an eye on them and now they are a little older, it’s to give them some good old fashioned fresh air!

Sometimes they need a little enticing. Here is a little activity that we’ve made many times over the last few years that my kids really enjoy.

2. Tie a piece of twine firmly around the pine cone leaving enough twine to tie your pinecone onto a tree branch when you have finished.

3. Using a knife, smear the pine cone with peanut butter until it is completely covered. I often use a sunflower seed spread as a peanut butter substitute when doing this activity in large groups in case of peanut allergies and it works just as well!

It can get a little messy, but that is half the fun and precisely the reason this is an outside activity

4. Roll the pine cone in an oven tray filled with birdseed until the peanut butter is completely covered in birdseed. I used a wild bird seed mix from the supermarket, but there are many other birdseed mixes available.

5. Hang your pine cone bird feeder in a tree in your back yard and wait for the birds!

Frog and her friends decided that they would then continue their outdoor play in our outdoor play kitchen using the leftover tray full of birdseed, some leaves from the nearby herb garden and water collected from toy saucepans left in the rain. Once again I was grateful that this was an outdoor activity!

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